November 3, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

Climbing Down

Matt Helms
Minister for Children and Families, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 31:1–7
Habakkuk 1:1–4, 2:1–4
Luke 19:1–10

I had always done what was prudent. Where had it got me? Everything I had tried to hold had escaped me. Perhaps the secret was to do the opposite: perhaps to keep the things one loved one had to gamble them; one had to give all the heart.

Paul Murray
An Evening of Long Goodbyes

Some say that it begins with fear. Others say it begins with hurt, loss, grief. Still others say it is about a desire for stability, finding permanence in an impermanent world. But regardless of how it begins, all of those things can create a numbness in us—a shrinking back and removal that is akin to self-preservation. There are many things in our world that can numb us—news of violence, news of political dysfunction, news of tragedy—and with that numbness comes a level of reservation and retreat.

Around 600 B.C., the country of Judah was in disarray. The last 400 years had seen a steady decline and fracturing from the golden era of Israel’s monarchy led by David and Solomon, and the nation of Israel found itself split and divided—two warring factions grasping over power and bringing their governance to a standstill, all while the rest of the world began to grow in influence and power. The nation of Israel divided into north and south—Israel and Judah—and they had seen what little influence they had in the region dissolving. By 722 B.C., the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, and the southern kingdom of Judah had survived only through an uneasy partnership with the Assyrian leaders. In just over 100 years, however, the Assyrians fell as well, removing any sense of protection that Judah had. They now found themselves caught between empires—between Egypt and Babylon, called the Chaldeans—and they knew that there was not much that they would be able to do if war came.

The prophet Habakkuk, whom we read from in our first lesson this morning, was active in his prophetic ministry during this messy and tumultuous period. His words—“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, or cry to you ‘Violence!’?”—are reminiscent of some of the most anguished psalms; he clearly saw the gravity of what the people were facing. Indeed, the book of Habakkuk is written as a liturgical drama, a dramatic confrontation between the prophet and God.

Biblical scholar Kent Harold Richards notes that this encounter is unique among the prophetic books: rather than God delivering a complaint against the people through the mouths of the prophet, instead the prophet is delivering a complaint against God—much in the way that Job critiques and demands answers of God
in his famous story. Habakkuk’s complaint is a legal one, one of injustice as God’s chosen people devolve into chaos in the face of disaster, and his complaint echoes so many of our own personal complaints against God as the prophet struggles between faith and doubt, caught between judgment and a hope of salvation.

But rather than bringing this complaint into public or even amongst close friends as in the book of Job, Habakkuk instead decides to take to the walls of the city of Jerusalem: “I will stand at my watchpost . . . to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.” Habakkuk has in effect removed himself from the people; he has removed himself in fear and hurt and grief from what he knows will come, and he lies in wait with a sort of angry resignation, waiting for God to come to him.

Six hundred years later, during the time of Jesus, we meet another man waiting high above for God’s arrival. The second lesson we read tells the story of Zacchaeus, a beloved children’s story because they too can relate to someone so small in stature, but also a rich and meaningful story that carries a great deal
of background. Zacchaeus, the text says, was the chief tax collector in the area, a job that would have made him a hated man in Jericho. Hatred for tax collectors would have gone beyond the grumbling that we direct towards the IRS; tax collectors were like the Sheriff of Nottingham from the Robin Hood movies: notorious for skimming off the top and viewed as stooges for the Roman empire. In other references throughout the Gospel of Luke, “tax collectors and sinners” are a package phrase, giving you a sense of the esteem in which they were held. In fact, in a scene just prior to this passage from Luke comes the famous pronouncement: “It will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” a clear indictment of the wealth that Zacchaeus possessed.

So if at the outset of this story Luke depicts this man as a villain, it’s not hard to imagine why the crowds wouldn’t have let him up to the front, his stature nonwithstanding. Indeed, his social standing in the community already made him something of an outcast. But as with so many of Luke’s parables and stories,
there is more than meets the eye here with this rich tax collector. This man Zaccheus has some level of interest in Jesus. The text says that he wanted to see him, but a better translation of the Greek word –hor’ah’o—is that he wanted to experience and understand him. His climbing the tree went beyond curiosity. Zacchaeus was waiting for Jesus much in the same way that Habakkuk took his place on the watchtower: there was something stirring in his soul.

There is also, interestingly enough, an element of the removal and resignation of status that characterizes Habakkuk. The text says that Zacchaeus hid in a sycamore tree; sycamore trees were massive with full and thick branches, the type of tree in which it would have been nearly impossible to see a person. It isn’t clear from the text if Zacchaeus ever expected Jesus to actually notice him or if he was just hoping to gain a level of understanding from seeing the one called Emmanuel, “God with us,” from afar, but it’s not a stretch to imagine Zacchaeus using this as a place to hide, high above and safely removed from the crowds that hated him, waiting in his watching place, just like Habakkuk, to see what might happen next.

The protagonist’s removal from those around him in both of these passages reminded me of a book written by Paul Murray, one of my favorite authors. In his novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Murray writes through the perspective of Charles, a young aristocrat who has grown up in elite ranks of modern-day Ireland. Early in the novel, we find Charles removed from the rest of society, often describing in the language of objects the people he meets. This detached and stable life that he has built for himself comes crashing down, however, when it is revealed that the family fortune he inherited is nothing more than a series of ever-increasing debts, something that forces him out of his ivory tower and into the streets of Dublin.

Throughout this process of coming down from the ivory tower, Charles undergoes an awakening of sorts. He slowly begins to abandon his detached nature and invests in the lives of the people he formerly saw as down-and-outs. He advocates for better working conditions for the men he works alongside at a jar factory. He befriends an oafish character named Frank, who turns out to have a heart of gold. In one of the climatic scenes of the book, Charles finds himself at the racetrack, placing down a bet down on the longest of long shots—a sharp break from earlier in the novel when he bet only on the favorites and winners. “I had always done what was prudent”, he says. “Where had it got me? Everything I had tried to hold had escaped me. Perhaps the secret was to do the opposite: perhaps to keep the things one loved, one had to gamble them; one had to give all the heart.” This scene completes Charles’ climbing down from the safety of the tower to which he had retreated. Instead, he takes a risk; he goes against common sense and norms and instead goes with his heart, goes with the down-and-outs and the outcast. He swallows his fear, desire for stability, and doubt and takes a gamble.

One forgets how frequently Jesus took risks and gambles from the standards of first-century Jewish culture. It would have been easy for him to walk past Zacchaeus obscured up in the sycamore tree and keep on his way. But instead Jesus stops, looks up, and invites himself into Zacchaeus’s home. The crowd’s response is swift and unforgiving: “He has gone to be a guest of one who is a sinner,” they say, but Jesus’ gamble proves to be correct. From his place of seclusion and safety, Zacchaeus climbs down, and with that climbing down comes an immediate investment in the world around him. Without prompting, Zacchaeus states that he will give half of what he owns to the poor and will pay back fourfold anyone that he has defrauded—a number that would have to be massive.

Jesus—to use the language of Charles—is willing to gamble on the down-and-outs, the lost, the sinners, the tax collectors. It is not the prudent thing to do, but he does it nonetheless, because that is what he was called to do. In order to love, in order to be loved, in order to inspire, Jesus must first invest in them with no hope of return. But it is in that invitation to climb down from the towers that we have put ourselves into—to take risks just as God has taken a risk on us—that we can truly invest our whole heart.

After Habakkuk waiting up on the wall above the city challenges God, God responds to him—not in the triumphal way listed in the book of Job, but rather in the form of a promise. God asks Habakkuk to write down this promise, an indication that this promise would take time and would need to be preserved but
a promise that would nonetheless come true: “There is still a vision of the appointed time,” God says. “If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by faith.” To a man who was watching his nation crumble around him, God makes the promise that Judah would indeed survive—in time, it would even thrive. This small country, the down-and-out nation of Judah, is worth gambling on, investing in, believing in, because ultimately Habakkuk was not making a gamble at all. Neither was Jesus when he called to the tax collector and ate with sinners. God has made a promise to each of his children that defies the long odds or present-day trauma that we might experience. And so, as people of God, we cannot remove ourselves from the world. We must live in that promise.

This final verse of God’s response to Habakkuk—”for the righteous live by faith” was later taken up by the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther—both of whom argued vehemently that part of living in this world was not acting solely based upon our deeds and works. Instead, living by faith meant living radically at times—eschewing safety and removing ourselves from the watchposts, sycamore trees, and ivory towers. We are called to deeply engage and to take risks for what we love, for in giving so freely of our hearts we might find the fullness within them.

Our retreat from the world may start with fear. It may start with hurt, loss, or grief. It may come from a desire for stability, to find permanence in an impermanent world. But ultimately retreat is not the end of the story. We are called down from the tree like Zacchaeus. We are called down from the watchtower like Habakkuk. We are called into the fray of things—the messy, the incomplete, and the confusing—led on by a promise that God is with us. We have been called to participate in the building of the kingdom of God. It is not easy work. It is not simple work, but it is not work that can be done from afar.

It is the work done in the difficult places that will matter. What an incredible gift it is that we are challenged to climb down and participate in it. Thanks be to God. Amen.